Katrina Mason helps people avoid burnout by caring more for themselves

"If you can last in that job, it's unavoidable to get vicarious trauma," Ms Mason said.

"If you're consuming stories of child abuse and family violence every day, your view of the world does change."

The Newcastle Herald reported last Saturday that 18,000 children were in crisis in the Hunter-Central Coast region, but less than one in five have had contact with a caseworker.

The number of frontline workers employed to protect these children continues to decline.

"Child protection workers feel like they're forgotten," said Ms Mason, of Lemon Tree Passage in Port Stephens.

While workers in this sector often have access to employee assistance programs, Ms Mason said it was important to regularly practice self-care before reaching crisis point.

She worked for more than 20 years in youth homelessness, grief, loss and trauma counselling, out-of-home care, as well as child protection.

"I burnt out a few times and there was no specific support, supervision or training around what that is and what the antidote is," she said.

"It was just accepted that you'll burn out at some point. There's a bunch of different labels they have for it - compassion fatigue, secondary traumatic stress, vicarious trauma, exhaustion, empathy."

She said workers face a high risk for burnout in sectors such as the emergency services, medicine, teaching and aged-care.

People in roles that care for others often develop a strong sense of empathy.

"Their superpower is attunement to others. That's what makes them so good at their job," she said.

"You're so tuned into everyone else, you forget how to tune into yourself. Your attunement to yourself gets numbed out and dulled down."

Frustrated at the lack of help available, Ms Mason created a burnout tool to help others. One approach she uses is to encourage people to choose compassion over empathy.

"Compassion has a bit of a different psychological flavour to empathy," she said.

After years of caring for others, Ms Mason became the one receiving care.

She was diagnosed with breast cancer in September last year.

"I found a very big 4cm tumour in my right breast," she said.

"It had already spread to my lymph nodes and was very fast-growing. It was all the things you don't want to hear."

She went through chemotherapy, surgery and radiation and was given the all-clear in March.

"I did a lot of natural stuff, as well as the Western medicine," she said.

"I'm so much more deeply passionate about what I'm doing now [helping people manage burnout]. It is so important to have someone who will connect with you, rather than someone who can't because they're so overwhelmed [with burnout]."

This was proven to her in a personal way when a "nurse in the chemo ward held my hand while I cried one night".

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